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Guest Commentary

Investors, who ought to be wary of such fiscal recklessness, were instead caught up in manias of their own. Remember 2009, when everyone swore we’d never let our markets get drunk on consumer debt and sketchy assets again? According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, household debt has passed the pre-recession record of nearly $13 trillion — and that’s before what’s shaping up to be a holiday spending binge. Meanwhile, imaginary money known as bitcoin has been selling for $12,000 per . . . per what? Per unit of imaginary money, backed solely by the full faith and credit of other bitcoin believers. bitcoin is up nearly 1,000 percent this year. It’s the Dutch tulip craze, except that in Holland investors at least ended up with some bulbs when the bubble burst. When the bottom drops out of bitcoin, today’s giddy buyers might as well have a wallet full of Monopoly money.